Tag Archives: dogs

An effort to cut down on the number of homeless pets in one Texas city has prompted officials to slap pet owners with a $75 sin tax to help deter their furry friends from breeding. Failure to register your pet’s new litter within 14 days “could result in fines and penalties,” states El Paso’s new animal ordinance.

City officials have also limited dogs and cats to 2 planned or unplanned pregnancies a year in an effort to prevent shelters from being overwhelmed. Professional breeders complain that the city’s crackdown on careless pet owners unfairly punishes their responsible businesses that provide in-demand pets to welcoming new homes.

El Paso Animal Services received $250,000 from the city council to step-up its enforcement efforts that will include monitoring newspapers and other media to ensure citizens selling puppies and kittens have registered their new litters and paid the sin tax for their pets’ intentional or unintentional ‘romantic encounters.’

The Town of Highbridge's revised ordinance would prohibit animal “vocalizing,” defined as “howling, yelping, barking, squawking, etc.” for five minutes with four or more vocalizations per minute, or for 20 minutes with two or more vocalizations per minute.

A small town in New Jersey is on the verge of legislating how long dogs are allowed to bark before their owners can be fined or jailed. The strict barking limits would also apply to barking dogs at pet stores, kennels and animal shelters, making for one heck of a difficult law to prosecute based solely on ‘hearsay.’

The Town of Highbridge’s current dog barking ordinance is “very vague,” says Mayor Mark Desire, so he and fellow town council members responded with a proposed ordinance that would limit dogs’ barking to 5 minutes or 20 minutes, based on the frequency of barks per minute.

Operators of pet stores, kennels and animal shelters will be held to the same rules if the proposed ordinance is adopted on Oct. 14. Failure to control mass barking among dogs confined to tight quarters will result in the same penalties applied to pet owners in the form of fines up to $5,000 or up to 90 days in jail.

It’s likely that nobody reading this enjoys excessive dog barking and has experienced an incidence of it that just make your blood pressure skyrocket. Do you think calling the police or animal control should be a last resort after all efforts to get your neighbor to control their dog’s excessive barking have been exhausted, or do you agree with the town council’s plan to attack the disturbances head-on with fines and possible imprisonment is the appropriate solution?

A family’s beloved dog is missing after their vehicle was involved in a serious car wreck. Maggie, a 4-year-old Cockapoo, fled the accident scene and her family desperately wants to bring her home, but city bureaucrats are complicating recovery efforts.

The Ladensack family told NBC News in Durham, N.C. that they have checked local dog shelters, posted notices on Craigslist and in locals newspapers to no avail. They also posted nearly 600 ‘missing’ posters in the local area which has landed them in trouble with local bureacrats.

According to the Durham Planning Department, the family’s ‘missing dog’ signs are in violation of city code that prohibits posting flyers on utility polls. If the signs are not removed immediately, officials said, the Ladensacks will be fined.

“They’re threatening to hurt us for trying to do the only thing it’s possible for us to do, to get her face out there so people know we loved her and missed her,” Trish Ladensack, Maggie’s owner, told NBC. “To me it seems cruel and rotten,” said Trish Ladensack.

Despite the family’s pleas for compassion from city officials, Planning Department Director Steve Medlin said the Ladensack’s had two options they could consider: Continue posting signs on utility polls and face a $500 a day fine or post them in the public right of way alongside political campaign signs.

Interestingly, the city considers ‘missing dog’ flyers “commercial speech” because they solicit the public. Posting them in the public right of way makes them “non-commercial” speech because the signs do not advertise a commercial service.

Make sense? Of course it doesn’t! We’re dealing with big government bureaucrats who read and write laws as they benefit themselves, not the constituents whose best interests they were elected to represent and protect.

Contact the Durham Planning Department if you believe the Ladensack family is being treated unfairly in its attempts to recover the family’s lost dog.

Dogs are no longer permitted to visit their former owners buried in Concord, N.H. cemeteries, but that was probably not the intent of city council members who were concerned about reckless owners allowing their dogs to defecate on the final resting places of former citizens.

The city council voted Monday to enact an ordinance that punishes violators with fines between $50 and $1,000 for bringing their dog(s) inside Concord’s 13 public cemeteries. An exception has been made for service dogs, though no accomodations were made for those belonging to the deceased that might want to pay their last respects.

According to the Concord Monitor, several city council members expressed concern about the dog ban’s implications on law abiding citizens who do not allow their dogs to use cemeteries as “dog parks,” contrary to the opinion of the councilor who proposed the measure, Steve Shurtleff.

“Councilor Candace Bouchard asked what the measure would mean for people who regularly visit a loved one’s gravesite with their dog,” the Concord Monitor notes. “Pets bring so much comfort and safety,” she said.

Currently, the Concord Monitor is polling its readers to determine if this ordinance is reasonable. Results show 267 support the dog ban at cemeteries while 140 disapprove and 22 have no opinion on the matter. Here’s your chance to chime-in if the issue hits close to home or touches a nerve.

One respondent to the article’s comments section provided an argument that city council members likely did not take in to consideration when crafting this ordinance. Dog owners who frequent local cemeteries, says “DiDogWalker,” might actually be beneficial to maintaining overall cleanliness and ridding unwanted criminal elements from lurking among and disrespecting the deceased.

In my five years enjoying Blossom Hill Cemetery I have picked up more than my own dog’s droppings. I have also picked up beer cans, cigarette butts, trash and any other poo I come across figuring that something like this would ruin it for the rest of us, as it has. Also, some of this poo is from wildlife such as raccoons, skunks, deer, bear; not from dogs. What about the vandalism, grave diggings, flag burnings and the homeless people who live in the woods in back of this cemetery? I know all of this goes on because I LIVE in this neighborhood and I care about it. Maybe if more people are walking through this cemetery it would deter other heinous crimes from happening.

Having just banned sugar-sweetened beverages on city property, promoted an official “pot brownie” recipe, and currently working on a bill to ban toys in kids’ Happy Meals, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is now proposing criminal charges to be brought against anyone caught selling pets other than fish.

“If [San Francisco’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare] approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country’s first ban on the sale of all pets except fish,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported today. “That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.”

Everything is being banned in San Francisco except the ridiculous efforts of nanny state bureaucrats to dictate how citizens live their own lives independent of unnecessary government intrusion. Join the Nanny State Liberation Front on Facebook if you’ve had enough of big government butting its nose in places it doesn’t belong.

Fannie-Freddie Bailout Could Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion
June 29, 2010; CNBC.com“Some of us who don’t even own homes are paying to support others and their home ownership, and they ask ‘why,’” said Robert J. Shiller, a Yale University economics professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.”

This Independence Day, the State Will Protect You from You
The McDowell News (N.C.); June 29, 2010“We have fallen from throwing off the yoke of oppressive government and ‘the shot heard ’round the world’ to living under threat of prosecution by multiple layers of omnipotent, omniscient nanny-state government. If the Revolutionary soldiers and militiamen could see us, they’d hang it up. ‘I ain’t risking my life and limb for those bloated slobs.'”

Long Island Town Bans Pit Bulls, Rottweilers
WCBSTV.com (N.Y.); June 29, 2010“‘The reason we passed this law was to protect the safety of our residents, many of whom have felt threatened from dogs of this breed and asked us to do something about them,’ Rockville Center Mayor Mary Brossart said.” Some people are afraid of flying, but you don’t see anyone calling for planes to be grounded and airports closed (yet).

Taxing Fast Food Fails to Solve Obesity ‘Epidemic’
DailyIllini.com; June 29, 2010“I’m sure it takes a lot of time and resources to put these ‘sin taxes’ into effect, which makes me wonder what would happen if those resources were directed towards finding solutions that gave families healthy and inexpensive options that they could replace fast-food with.”